Dante shook his head. "Even if we could find a way to the Realm, we don't know where it will spit us out. It could add days of distance between us and Allamar."
"Yes, but it has the distinct benefit of not being the Entity of Destruction's backyard. Look, we just demolished a major part of Nolost's armies—maybe the major part. With any luck, we've delayed him more than we did ourselves. Now let's make way for the shore."
"Are you kidding?" a voice said. "You don't have time for any of that!"
The three of them looked about themselves in confusion.
"Now that's something," Blays said. "Because unless the wind suddenly learned how to speak, and do remarkably good impressions, I'd say that's Carvahal."
"But how could he even…" Dante groaned and tipped back his head at the sky. "The talismans. You've been spying on us all along!"
"It's not spying if we're on the same side," Carvahal said. "Anyway, it's a good thing I am spying on you, because I'm about to stop you from congratulating yourselves as you slit your own throats. You're not going to go through all those things you said to get back to Kalabar. You're going to go through one of the portals Nolost just built to attack you with."
"But that will send us to the Becoming."
"Not if Maralda does her job."
"She's going to reroute it to Kalabar? How's she going to do that?!"
"By repositioning it within Olastar, the realm that all the doorways exist within. That's as much as I know about the process. There's a reason she's the one doing all of this and not me."
"And she'll be able to send us right to the Emerald Titan? Then why would—"
Carvahal's disembodied voice sighed. "Don't get excited, it won't be that easy. It should put you back in the same spot you entered Kalabar to begin with."
"Should?" Blays said.
"She will likely have to do some dueling with Nolost to make this happen. Even if he's preoccupied, Olastar isn't always the most stable of places."
Dante nodded in thought. "Where is this Olastar, anyway? I've never heard of it before."
"You might as well ask where Rale is. Olastar exists in the place where it is. It's much smaller than any of the other realms, though. It's more like the sliver that exists in the gaps between them. Are you moving yet?"
"Huh?"
"Maralda's already started her work. If you're not ready to jump through by the time she's finished, I am going to be extremely cross with you."
Dante lurched forward, making way for the demon pits, which he hoped hadn't been completely filled in with lava. On the way, he glanced at Gladdic. "By the way, what was that…ah…thing you summoned?"
"An Andrac."
"A very disturbing one, even by the already disturbing standards of the Andrac."
"That was due to the source of the traces used to construct it."
"Which were?"
"Demons."
Dante took a bad step and almost fell. "The demons have traces?"
"It would seem so."
"What do you make of that?"
"I do not have the faintest idea."
"Well, it's probably for the best that it…didn't make it."
The first two pits were heaped high with gently burbling lava, and it had started to flow into the third one as well, enough to make it risky. But the fourth was all clear, and they made way down the rocky slope toward the oscillating green light. Dante brought some nether to him. He'd used up most of what he could command, and it didn't come easy.
"She's not quite done," Carvahal said. "But I get the feeling you should step through. Right now."
Feeling half out of his mind, Dante lowered himself into the spectral light. He found himself falling downward on his back, but past experience had prepared him for this, and he tucked his chin to his chest and barred his arms to either side of his head, landing on the floor of the passage.
The stars on the walls of the previous portal tunnels they'd been in had been more or less fixed. But the ones here streaked across it, while others whirled in erratic patterns, as if they were about to rip themselves apart. Blays and Gladdic fell into the passage beside him. They got up and headed for the opposite doorway, which was iridescent as oil and rippling like a sea churned by a leeward storm.
Blays tipped back his head, then immediately veered away from whatever he was looking at. "What the hell is that?"
Something was moving along the ceiling. Or beyond the ceiling. The space there was as dark as the night sky, as was the object lowering itself toward them, yet Dante's eye knew its shape at once: an immense arm, and a grasping hand.
"It is him," Gladdic said.
Dante broke into a run. "To the doorway!"
There is no running, Nolost's voice spoke in their minds. For this place is mine.
Dante made for the far end, glancing back as the hand drifted nearer. "Carvahal? Is she ready yet?"
"No," the god answered. "And do not step through until she is!"
Something about this only spurred Dante to run harder. The doorway turned the color of a dark mirror, undulating more violently with each moment. Dante came to a hard stop just in front of it. Behind them, the hand soared silently across the darkness, already three-quarters of the way along the tunnel toward them.
"We're about to be crushed to death!" Dante said. "Do something!"
The great bulk of the hand lowered closer. Hanging over them like a cathedral spire. Big enough to grasp the whole tunnel as easily as a reed. Dante threw his nether at it, but the shadows only vanished into its bulk. He backed closer to the doorway and tensed his legs, preparing to throw himself through it no matter what might lie beyond.
A second object appeared within the darkness and rushed toward the hand. It was too dark and vague to make out its shape, yet there was something feline in the way it romped across the sky. It bowled into Nolost, knocking the arm back, and tried to clamp down on the limb like a bear hug, but the hand swatted it back and continued toward them. Blays had shrunk his spear upon entering the seemingly empty tunnel, but he drew it again, half blinding Dante with its light, and put himself in front of them.
"We just killed ten thousand of your babies," he called to the sky. "Do you want to come get some too?"
Gladdic tipped back his head, watching silently. Knowing it wouldn't do him any good, Dante brought to hand as much nether as he still could. The hand spread itself wide above them.
"Go!" Carvahal yelled in their ears. "Get out of there right now!"
Dante spun about. The doorway had gone dark and perfectly still. He dived through it as if into a pool. He felt the disorienting sense of being flipped about, but rather than passing through that into Kalabar, he hung in the nothing, as if floating in an ocean he could neither see nor feel.
There can be no running! The entity's voice thundered inside his skull. You will not escape me. You can only—
A presence fired across the firmament and rammed into another so hard that wherever Dante was shook hard enough to snap his bones. He unstuck and fell forward into a shallow cavern. The air smelled and felt of Kalabar. The two others spilled in behind him, looking both rattled and exhilarated, a feeling they were all becoming quite familiar with.
"That was Maralda," Dante said in the general direction of the sky. "Wasn't it?"
"And you'd better start thinking about what kind of thank-you present to give to a god," Carvahal answered. "Time to stop talking before your talismans wear out. Besides, much longer, and he'll find out a way to spy on them himself. Get to the Titan, fast as you can. And don't slow down until you do."
"Is there something you're not telling us?"
Dante stared upward, but there was no reply. He walked out into what little there was of the daylight and blinked. It had been the evening in Gallador, and it felt like they'd been away for a full day, but in truth it had barely been an hour.
"We really have to walk there all over again?" Blays said. "Don't these people have any horses to steal?"
&nbs
p; "I'm not sure they even have horses here. I thought you said they rode around on giant lizards."
"Their knights did." Blays sounded enthused to be discussing The Troublesome Travels again, but his voice grew sadder. "But I have the feeling they've all been killed in the fighting. And their lizards with them."
Dante oriented himself, then headed in the direction of the Undazim. The ruins of the city past the portal were silent now, the broken stones littered with the bodies of both Talso and Dunites.
"Are you doing that?" Blays said.
Dante followed Blays' gaze across the ruins. Dead bodies were starting to sit up and glare at them. "That looks like the latest plague to me. Let's hope we can outrun them. I don't think I can fight off a second army today."
"We cannot allow ourselves to be delayed by more fighting," Gladdic said. "Let us send something to battle them in our stead."
He lowered himself to one knee. Dante felt him reaching deep into the shadows. He and Blays jumped backwards as a huge black shape unfurled itself upwards. Another Andrac stood before them, much like the one Gladdic had created in Gallador, taller than the usual ones and bearing many-bladed arms.
"Dispense with them." Gladdic gestured to the undead that had begun to heave themselves toward the three of them. "Once that is done, hunt down the beings of the Becoming."
The Andrac lowered its head, staring down at its maker with narrow starlight-silver eyes. It took a heavy step toward him.
"I wouldn't do that." Blays casually pointed the Spear of Stars at its chest. "This thing has killed things much worse than you."
The Star-Eater gazed at him, then turned about and strode away from both them and the city.
"Why isn't it doing what you say?" Dante said. "Don't they have to obey you?"
Gladdic grimaced. "Perhaps not when they are forged from the souls of the demons of Varaland."
"But what's going to hold off the zombies for us?"
Blays shrunk the spear. "Here's an idea: how about we just run?"
Dante supposed they were going to have to do that anyway if they wanted to get to the Titan as soon as they could. Already tired from a long day of travel and fighting, they couldn't manage more than a light jog, and a stream of undead gathered behind them. But after a while, the dead started to lose interest and peel away, and after two more miles or so, the last of them had given up the chase and wandered away.
They crossed as much of the Vault of the Sky as they could. As night neared, some high wind blew the clouds and smoke away, and Dante looked on a blue sky for the first time in ages. Yet it was crossed with thick black stripes, as if someone had cut out patches of it with a celestial knife, and he thought he'd rather not have looked on it at all.
He used what was almost the last of his nether to shape them another underground shelter to pass the night in, both to protect them from any rock-storms and so that they wouldn't have to keep watch.
It was sound thinking, for they were awakened hours later by the regular and then cacophonous drumming of rocks against the turf above them. They stretched out the stiffness and ate from their rations until the pounding dwindled out a couple minute later.
Dante opened the entrance enough for a look outside. "Well, I can't say that the storm's stopped."
"My ears can," Blays said.
"Because it never started. There aren't any rocks." He pulled back the earth and crawled outside. There were no pebbles and stones scattered about. But there were a great many dents. And he could still hear the rumble of it. His eyes latched on smoke rising in the distance—or rather, a great cloud of dust. "It wasn't a storm. It was a stampede."
"That's a hell of a lot of whatever those things are. They look big, too. What do you suppose was able to spook them like that?"
Something dropped in Dante's stomach. "Into the woods. Right now."
He'd built their shelter just outside of one of the groves and they ran for the trees, slipping inside them not ten seconds later. Once they were within cover, they slowed to a walk, advancing as quietly as they could.
A galloping sound arose from out in the grass. Dante couldn't see it yet, but there was a funny cadence to its gait, and it was already much louder than the largest warhorse. As it swung into view, Dante hid himself behind a shrub.
It looked related in kind to the scythers. But rather than being the size of a large dog, as the smaller variety was, it stood thirty feet tall, with four insect-like legs supporting its sleek black oval body. A thinner section, something like a thorax, bore two immense scythe-limbs before it, and rose upward to provide height for its teardrop-shaped head, which like many of those from the Becoming had no features except a fang-filled mouth.
It trampled after the fleeing beasts. The forest kept quiet even as it receded into the distance.
"If things like that are out there," Blays said, "then maybe we should stay in here."
It was probably safer within the forest, but it would slow them down. Instead, they jogged through the grass alongside the trees, and Dante scouted the way and their surroundings with dead flies. Through them, he saw demons chasing down native creatures, and those same creatures feasting on human meat. Holes opened in the ground and festered like a leper's sores. The very sky seemed to flicker.
His scouts sighted the river and the three of them angled toward it. Miles later, they stumbled into a field of huge tubes sprouting from the ground, which they hadn't seen anything like when they'd crossed the Vault of the Sky just days before. Dante couldn't tell if the tubes were mineral or flesh, but they spat up an orange fluid that corroded the ground where it fell, and one whiff of the steam rising from the corrosion had them all feeling faint. But this was the last trouble they faced before they came to the Undazim.
The approach to it was deserted, and they made their way down the red stone steps cut into the cliff face until they stood before the Greatfall. Dante had no way to part the water like the Talso did and so he shaped a roof of rock for them to pass beneath. With the falls behind them, Dante tried to find whatever lever or action Tono had hit with the nether to activate the bridge, but it had been too dark for him to see at the time, and he eventually had to span the gap with a stone crossing. They were almost to the inner chamber where the Undazim should have been when the pounding wall of water tore down the roof Dante had built to get through it, snapping the bridge off with it.
Blays whipped out the Spear of Stars and jabbed its point into the rock wall of the chamber, arresting himself; Dante thrust forth a tongue of stone to catch himself and Gladdic. Before anything else could go wrong, they climbed up to the platform where the Undazim had been. It was nowhere to be seen.
"It's, uh, just down there, right?" Blays gestured into the unseen depths of the tube-like chamber that ran down to the belowlands. "Because if you tell me we have to climb all the way down there…"
"It's probably just one of these levers," Dante said. "We'll pull them until the machinery starts working."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"Then we'll start hitting them."
"A suggestion," Gladdic said. "First, inspect the ceiling."
Dante's eyebrow twitched upward. They cast the ether into every corner of the space, but there were no spiders nor webs. Dante started with the lever closest to the ropes. As soon as he pulled it, something clunked and the ropes began to reel upward.
They had nothing to do for the next half hour but watch the water fall and wipe its mists from their faces. Typically, Dante would have spent the time working through various contingency plans for all of the things that were worrying him, but he thought of almost nothing at all. The break was so peaceful he was almost disappointed when the Undazim heaved into view and creaked to a stop before them.
They headed down. Dante spent the trip searching through his blood to try to feel the connection he'd made with it at the Eye-Hill. He got so wrapped up in the attempt that the Undazim touched ground in the belowlands before he knew what was happening. They stepped
off the platform and into the chamber tucked away behind the Greatfall and the lake it rained down into.
Dante shook his head. "The blood I marked the place where we left Adi and Tono. I can't feel it."
"My gods, we'll have to wander off at random and pray it's the right direction!" Blays said. "But if you want to get really crazy, we could just head toward the Titan, and keep our eyes out for the Eye-Hill with the giant tree sticking up out of it."
They left the cavern. Bare red rock led them into the blue forest. Something was picking off Dante's scouts again and between that and his inability to sense the blood he'd smeared on the wall of the shelter at the Eye-Hill he was beginning to feel uneasy. If the plagues could affect every other layer of the world, was it possible for Nolost to set one loose upon people's ability to use nether? Diminishing or even removing that ability altogether? It was a deeply unnerving thought. The power to wield the nether had been part of him for so long that the idea of being without it was like losing his arms or his eyes—or both at once.
He tried to follow the same route they'd taken before, but gave that up pretty much at once when the terrain forced them to detour away from anything he recognized. All that mattered was steady progress, though, so he simply pushed north along the best path he could manage. With no major setbacks, they could reach Adi and Tono before nightfall, having lost just two days to the mission to Gallador.
Somewhere around two that afternoon, he felt something like a string being plucked very faintly inside his head. He oriented himself to the sensation, then sent two of his scouts flying toward it. At that same moment a sinkhole opened up beneath them and if Dante hadn't been able to stabilize the ground underfoot they would have been dropped to their deaths.
"I think I've found the Eye-Hill," he said once his scouts caught sight of it. "At least, I've found an Eye-Hill."
"If your dead bugs can't see any others, it has to be the right one," Blays said. "Either that or we're in very big trouble."
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 47
